Exactly What to Do in Every Step of an Ecommerce Flywheel

An ecommerce flywheel is a self-reinforcing loop made up of key business elements like traffic, conversions, and the customer experience, all linked together to fuel continuous growth and profitability. Put effort into one element to get the next element going, so on and so forth, until you’re all the way around the loop. 

There are four steps in an ecommerce flywheel:

Attract potential top customers

Engage these potential customers

Turn potential customers into actual customers

Make the customers want to come back.

Below is exactly what to do in each step. 

Step 1: Attract Potential Top Customers 

A flywheel starts with attracting relevant traffic to your e-commerce store, specifically people who have the potential to be your top customers. The more traffic you get, the more momentum that builds up in your flywheel. 

Here’s what you want to do to attract ideal customers: 

Create five pieces of useful content that you can repurpose and distribute across social media, your email list, and website. Useful content answers questions your ideal customers would have. For example, you could create a product demo video and infographic that shows how your product solves their biggest problem. 

Choose 2-3 keywords or phrases your ideal customer types into a search engine and use them on your website and within blog content. Don’t overdo it with these keywords and phrases. They should feel and read natural. 

Create a free resource your top customers would appreciate, such as a quiz or questionnaire. You could use it to solicit email newsletter signups or to simply get the word out about your brand. GoPro has a cool questionnaire that helps you pick out the accessories you would need based on what you’re doing. 

Step 2: Keep Potential Customers Engaged 

Once you get the attention of the people you want shopping with you, you need to keep their attention. Traffic doesn’t mean much if they’re just stopping by your site and that’s the first and last interaction they have with your brand. The focus should be on building the relationship and showing customers that you have what they need.  

Here’s what to do to keep potential customers engaged: 

Introduce a try-before-you-buy program. It doesn’t have to be for every product. But one way to get people to purchase your product is to let them try it first for free. It could be handing out samples at trade shows. Or, it could be something like makeup company IL Makiage does. They allow customers to choose up to 3 products to try for 14-days for free, just pay shipping. You’re only charged full price for what you keep. 

Host 1-2 live streams a month on at least one of your social media platforms. Lives give potential customers a chance to get to know who’s behind the brand and to gather information. Lives also tend to get better engagement than static posts, especially if you’re doing a workshop or special event. 

Post on social media every day. Yes, everyday. There’s two reasons for this. One, the algorithm will get to know you and start pushing your content out to more people. More importantly, potential customers will start bonding with you. Post at least once a day, and do a mix of content (a video one day, an image post the next day, and a carousel the next). 

Step 3: Turn Potential Customers into Actual Customers

You’ve attracted ideal customers and engaged them. The next step in the ecommerce flywheel focuses on turning these potential customers into actual customers. In other words, conversions. 

Empower potential customers to reach their goal, whether finding out a price, watching a demo, or getting a discount, so that you can reach your goal of making them a customer. But don’t force it. 

Here’s how to turn potential customers into actual customers: 

Create compelling product pages with a description of the product, price, and a product demo video on each page or, even better, user generated content (UGC). If you scroll down on Amazon’s product pages, you’ll see they have a whole section of UGC videos. Also, put a buy now button next to the add to cart button to streamline purchasing. 

Give people who’ve signed up for your email list a discount code for their first purchase. There might not be anything more persuasive than “here’s 50% off your first purchase with us.” If you can’t go that high because it doesn’t make sense for your profit margins I get it. But give them something worthwhile. It could even be just for a specific product. If a customer looked at that specific product, send them an email that it’s 19.99 for a limited time. 

Enable purchases on multiple channels. Every customer has a timeline for purchases but also a preferred channel to buy on. If you have the team to do it, make it so people can make purchases via phone, chatbot, your website, and social media. This eases the decision to make a purchase. If you can’t do them all, choose two. 

Step 4: Turn Them Into Repeat Customers 

The key to the ecommerce flywheel actually fueling continuous growth and profitability is not stopping at getting people to purchase something. Keep the momentum in your flywheel going by turning customers into loyal ones. 

This might be the most important step because it’s what keeps the flywheel going round and round. Repeat customers become brand advocates. As they advocate for your brand, they get new potential customers interested, and back to the beginning of the flywheel we go. 

Here’s how to turn them into repeat customers: 

Create a unique loyalty program. That first discount got them in to door. Now, get them to come back with a loyalty program that rewards them for repeat purchases. Starbucks has a really good one. You earn stars for every dollar you spend and can redeem those stars (starting at 25) for favorites like drink customization, free food and drink, and merch. 

Streamline the purchasing process. If a customer really needs your product, they might go through a horrible buying experience, but just once. How easy it was to buy your product influences a person to come back a lot more than you probably realize. Redirect customers to 1-2 pages at the most during check out, like going from the review your items page to the complete your purchase page. Make sure your support team answers inquiries quickly. And tie off with your supplier to enable quick shipping. 

Expand your product line and pricing. Unless you sell products that people buy more than once a month, like tissue, work to build a sizable product selection. Look at your main products and come up with others that you can upsell or cross sell based off of them. Also, look at pricing every quarter and adjust it to better fit your audience if it doesn’t negatively impact profit. 

Bonus: Ask for customer feedback. People will tell you exactly why they aren’t coming back or what you could do to make them loyal if you let them. You can do what most do and send customer feedback surveys via email a week after a purchase. But I would look at social media comments and UGC for feedback. People are more likely to share without prompting. 

What’s the Biggest Benefit of an Ecommerce Flywheel?

The biggest benefit of an ecommerce flywheel is having a long-term plan for generating profit in your business. One-time customers do not make you as much money as repeat customers do. An ecommerce flywheel helps you focus on creating a loyal customer base by 

delivering a remarkable customer experience at each step. 

What’s the Difference Between a Marketing Funnel and an Ecommerce Flywheel?

There’s one big difference between a marketing funnel and an ecommerce flywheel: 

The marketing funnel focuses on attracting leads and converting them. It’s very linear. On the other hand, an ecommerce flywheel is all about building relationships with customers that result in them making repeat purchases. It’s also very circular, in that repeat customers become brand advocates that inspire new potential customers to come forward. 

How to Create a Flywheel for Your Ecommerce Business 

If you’re ready to create an ecommerce flywheel for your business, follow these steps: 

Identify how you’ll know if your flywheel is working. Businesses usually track metrics like traffic, conversion rate, customer lifetime value, and average order value. Pick 2-4 that will really show you if you’re growing and more profitable after a long period. 

Map out exactly what you’re going to do in each step of the flywheel. For example, you’re going to launch a paid ad campaign to attract ideal customers, you’re going to post on social media everyday to keep them engaged, you’re going to optmize product pages to convert them, and then you’re going to introduce a loyalty program to keep them coming back. 

Create a document that standardizes the processes for each action you’re going to take. Document every step involved. And assign each step to someone on your team so that it gets done. 

Review your ecommerce flywheel every quarter. Remember, the flywheel is meant to fuel growth and profitably over a long period. So, checking it every week doesn’t make sense. Give it time to show you results. Schedule a meeting with everyone involved to go over results and reflect on the process. Leave this meeting with at least 5 actionable steps for finetuning your flywheel.